Speak No Evil

SIXTEEN

CARINA AND NICK ARRIVED together at the police station early Thursday morning. They didn’t talk much on the drive over. Carina was sure Nick was uncomfortable about having his brother brought in, even willingly, for questioning in a capital murder case.

Her? She didn’t want to talk for fear of saying something stupid. Something like, “Why were you in my dreams last night?”

As soon as her head had hit the pillow, she’d been out. And dreaming about Nick Thomas, his hard body, his too-sexy-for-words cowboy hat. If Nick was an example of the type of men who lived in Montana, maybe she should put in for a transfer.

She’d woken up rested for the first time all week. She didn’t remember every detail of her dream-probably good, lest she blush when she saw Nick-but in her dream she had kissed him and he had pulled her into his arms. Then the way dreams go, they were both naked in her bed and he was about to make love to her…

She cleared her mind, focused on the task at hand. “Ready?” she asked Nick.

“Yes.”

She’d agreed to let Nick observe the interview, but suggested that he stand in the adjoining room where he could watch and listen unnoticed by his brother. He nodded a curt agreement, his face blank. She didn’t know what he was thinking.

At least Steve had taken Nick’s advice and retained a criminal defense attorney. Both were waiting in the interview room.

In the adjoining room, Dillon and Will joined Carina and Nick. “Are we ready?” Carina asked her brother and her partner. On the phone late last night they had decided that the primary purpose of the meeting was to push Steve Thomas to tell the truth about Friday night as well as his past arguments with Angie. Next, they would ascertain what, if anything, he knew about the deleted comments.

They entered the room, leaving Nick behind, introduced themselves, and set up a recorder.

“Let’s start with how you met Angela Vance,” Carina began.

They’d met last September at the beginning of the school year when he sat next to Angie in computer class.

“We became friends immediately.” Steve sat military straight, hands clasped in front of him.

“When did you become romantically involved?” Carina asked.

“In December.”

“How did it happen?”

Steve tensed. “Why does that matter?”

“Anything, no matter how small, could be relevant.”

Steve glanced down at his hands and Carina couldn’t help but wonder if he was trying to come up with a believable lie. “She asked if I wanted to get together one weekend. I said sure. I thought she meant go out for a date.”

“What did she mean?”

He paused long enough for Carina to prompt him again.

“She wanted to be ‘friends with benefits.’ ”

Carina had heard about such “special” friendships. Friends who had sex but no emotional or permanent attachment. An open relationship. Angie had written about several “friends with benefits” relationships in her journal, including hers with Steve. Carina would be a failure at that sort of arrangement. She loved sex, but it meant little without an emotional commitment. Maybe she was a romantic at heart, but the idea of an eighteen-year-old being so nonchalant about meaningful relationships made Carina sad.

“And what did you want?” she asked Steve.

“I wanted what Angie wanted.”

Carina didn’t believe him. “So you were okay with the relationship.”

“More or less.”

“I don’t think you’re telling us everything.”

“It’s not important.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do!” he said, his fists clenching. “This isn’t about me, it’s about Angie. I didn’t kill her. I keep saying it and you don’t believe me.”

Dillon interjected. “You and Angie had a sexual relationship that you wanted to be exclusive, but she didn’t.”

“But that makes it look wrong, or like I would want to hurt her because we didn’t want the same thing.”

Dillon continued. “Steve, what we want is the truth. Sometimes the truth shines a light on things that you know nothing about.”

Steve didn’t say anything for a long minute. “Yes, I cared a lot about Angie and I didn’t like having an open relationship. I was monogamous, but Angie wasn’t comfortable with that. She thought we should both be seeing other people.”

“And did you and Angie break up because you couldn’t agree on the type of relationship you wanted?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then why?”

“I discovered her journal and confronted her.”

“What was her reaction?”

A faint tic pulsed in Steve’s cheek. “She told me to lighten up.”

“And then she broke up with you, correct?”

He nodded.

“Please answer for the tape, Mr. Thomas.”

“Yes, she broke up with me the next day. But I understood. It hurt, but I understood.”

“Understood what?” Carina asked.

“Angie needed attention from men. Her father skipped town when she was young. Used to promise to visit, never made it. The last time she saw him, she was thirteen. He didn’t come to her, she ran away and tracked him down in San Francisco. With his new wife. He didn’t want children, never had, and told Angie that.

“She was devastated. She lost her virginity when she was fourteen to a nineteen-year-old high school senior and just fell into that cycle.”

“So you think she slept with you because she wanted to sleep with her father?” Dillon asked.

“No! She slept with me-and others-because she wanted to feel love. She equated sex with love. And I-” he stopped.

“Go on,” Dillon prompted. “What did you get from your friendship with Angie?”

“I thought I could help her.”

“If you showed her love then maybe she wouldn’t think it had to come with sex, too.”

“Exactly!” Steve’s face lit up. “We were making a lot of progress. Until the journal fiasco. I didn’t handle that right at all. Maybe if I’d done something differently, said something more supportive, didn’t argue with her-I don’t know.” He sank his face into his hands.

“What prompted Angie to get a restraining order against you?” Carina asked.

“I don’t know why she did it, except she was scared. Not of me,” he continued quickly, “but of other things going on.”

“But she got the restraining order against you,” Will interjected. “No one else. She was scared of you.”

“She wasn’t scared of me,” Steve insisted.

“You fought with Angie on January 19 at the Sand Shack in front of witnesses,” Will said. “What was that argument about?”

“After I discovered her journal online, I was worried about her. I started monitoring the page and the comments because she was really going too far, even engaging in conversations with some of these guys. The night before our fight there was a comment that really disturbed her. She called me, accused me of posting it to scare her. I, of course, said I didn’t. I’d never purposefully scare her.”

This was the first they’d heard of Angie contacting Steve after the breakup. It would be easy enough to check through her phone records, which they already had a copy of.

“What did the comment say?”

“I don’t know, she said she deleted it after she read it.”

“And that was what day?”

“January eighteenth, I think.”

“What disturbed her about that comment?” If it was worse than the comments she’d kept online it must have been violent or personal.

“He knew something about her. That’s why she thought it was me.”

“What did he know?”

“Where she worked.”

Carina and Will glanced at each other. “He said that?”

“I didn’t read it, but Angie basically accused me of trying to expose her and scare her. The next day I went to talk to her, to convince her it wasn’t me, that I would never hurt her, and, well, it was a big fight. I told her to go to the police, give them the information about the person who scared her. She didn’t want to tell anyone about her journal. I told her she was going to end up dead if she didn’t watch herself. Her pal Kayla convinced her that I was the threat. It wasn’t me. It was never me. That’s why I started following her.”

“You followed her on the Friday she disappeared. Why did you lie to us about going to the Shack twice that night?”

“I didn’t want to admit that I had been following her. It looked bad. Believe me, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d look at me as her murderer. I didn’t want you to have a reason to, because I know I’m not guilty and if you looked at me, you wouldn’t be looking for the real killer…“ his voice trailed off. “I was stupid.”

“You also lied about how much time you spent reading her journal,” Carina said, putting her hands on the table and looking him in the eye. “You flat-out lied to us two days ago. We know you’ve spent more than forty hours on her journal.”

“I told you, I was trying to protect her. She didn’t want me around, so I had to watch her any way I could.”

“Including stalking her.”

Steve’s attorney finally spoke up. “My client did not stalk the victim. He admitted to following her for her own protection, not stalking her.”

Carina dipped her head. “You followed her home the night she disappeared. You were the last person to see her alive.”

He swallowed and his brow began to sweat. “You don’t know how sick I feel. You don’t know how much I hate myself for assuming that she was safe in her own home. If I’d handled the entire situation differently, if I’d gone to the police myself…I don’t know. I don’t know what I could have done to stop Angie from self-destructing.” He closed his eyes.

“Can you think of anything else about that posted comment that scared her?”

He shook his head, looked first at Carina, then the men. “She didn’t give me any details except that the comment implied the location of her work. That it was on the beach. Not by name. But it freaked her out.”

“Was that the only time she contacted you about being scared about a comment?”

“Yes.”

Carina turned off the recorder. “You’re free to go, Mr. Thomas, but I have to ask you not to leave town. We may have more questions.”

He nodded. “Anything to find Angie’s killer.”

When Steve left with his attorney, Carina pulled out her cell phone and called Patrick. She filled him in on the deleted comments and asked, “Is there any way to work with the MyJournal people?”

“We’re working on it right now,” Patrick said, “but it’s slow. However, she banned nineteen people from commenting on her journal. I have the list for you.”

“Do you have any personal information?”

“No, but you might want to start by hitting their personal pages and see if there’s anything that jumps out.”

“Thanks, Patrick, we’ll be right up.”

Nick cornered Steve in the hall when he left the interview room. “Steve,” he began.

“I had a feeling you were around. You heard everything.” He sounded so bitter.

“Yes. I’m glad you told the truth.”

“Are you?” he asked. “I told you the truth before and you didn’t believe me.”

“You told me a half-truth, Steve. You lied to me.”

“I told you what was important. Instead, you pushed and pushed, just to humiliate me.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“Funny, that’s how I felt.”

They stared at each other, at a standstill. Nick didn’t know what to do to fix the broken relationship with his brother.

If Nick went back to Montana, when would he see his brother again? It would be much easier to just continue his life as if this had never happened.

Carina, Will, and Dillon walked out of the interview room. Steve looked at them, then Nick, then walked away without another word.

Nick let him go. He asked Dillon, “What’s your take?”

“I’m ninety percent certain he’s innocent.”

Will concurred.

Carina said. “We gave him enough opportunities to trip up. But at least we have something to follow up on.”

“I’ll run upstairs and get the list of screen names from Patrick,” Will said and left.

“List?” Nick asked.

Carina said, “Patrick has a list of nineteen MyJournal members who Angie banned from commenting on her page.”

“And you think the deleted comment that scared her came from one of those people?”

“Exactly. We’ll see who she banned around January eighteenth and go from there. Maybe we’ll get lucky and there will only be one.”

“I think Mr. Thomas’s assessment of Angie Vance is accurate,” Dillon said, “at least from what I can tell without talking to her. She was seeking both validation and attention from men. Seeing from early on that she was receiving both when she had sex with them, she kept looking for someone to give her what she needed. Not finding it, she moved on.”

“And that’s why she dated older men?”

He nodded. “Boys her age didn’t give her the approval or affection she needed. Not that she got it from older men, but they were more mature than eighteen-year-old college kids.”

Carina’s cell phone rang. “It’s Will,” she said as she answered it. “Any news?”

“We have three MyJournal members banned by Angie on either January eighteenth or nineteenth. Patrick is working with the company to get any information they have about them. Patrick is all over it, and we might have something tonight or tomorrow. He’s also going to set up a way to track the three members online so if they post to any MyJournal page, we’ll know instantly.”

“Fabulous. Maybe we can find out who his next victim is before he gets to her.”